Leaving IP issues aside for the moment, I think you have some pretty interesting ideas there. I would be afraid of the AI-mandated missions quickly becoming repetitive and boring though, because they cannot match the quality of professional designers. Wouldn't they turn out to be formulaic at the end of the day? Kind of like the "travel to X kill Y of Z".

Also, if you take a game like Battlecruiser... I think it had something similar to what you describe, or was meant to. Things were supposed to happen all around you, wars breaking out and such, but for all that, it looked very bland. I always had the feeling that I am stuck in this giant spacecraft with no real goals and nothing to do. Admittedly, I did not play that game extensively. So in your implementation you really have to push information to the player, and not just about the current mission in the campaign. Add depth to the setting by making the player feel like he's part of the grand scheme of things. Wouldn't it be a good idea to be very informed about the general state of affairs? Like news channels reporting important battles, and maybe a galactic overview showing recent events.

I wrote a long reply, but forgot to put in my password and it dissapeared (cries).

I guess I'll try and summarize it from memory.

lightbringer,

yup you hit the nail on the head. The biggest problem that plagues this idea is that the player is pretty much doing the same missions that every other ai ship in the game is doing, and there is really little that the player can do to do them (the missions) better. To partially solve this, the player missions will be created seperately from all of the other missions, and will be more detailed (and probably more important).

In addition I'm hoping to add a little RPG element to the game in the form of permanent ship stats (on pretty much everything: accuracy, hits taken, or whatever), as well as a detailed and interesting environment. Each ship has a unique name, and when a ship dies, it really dies (no respawning of anything). This will also apply to the player, making the game a little exciting.

In addition, I am working on including a very basic living economy, so that civilian ships have a reason to wander between planets, and so that the player can be a trader if he wants.

As far as IP goes..
I started this project with the idea that it would just be for me, and I would never release the game, let alone pictures or anything. This has changed as support has grown among Star Wars fans. I've been trying to research LucasArt's fan game policies, but have come up short. Honestly the closet i got to any kind of explanation was this fan game's disclaimer:
http://dsgames.guerrestellari.net/#discl

The existence of www.lucasfiles.com (which is run my lucasarts, and is a repository of a bunch of star wars mods and other fan made stuff), and the fact that a couple other fan works do exist seems to suggest that LucasArts is pretty lenient in this regard. I have made every attempt to make it clear (on my website) that I am not affiliated with LucasArts, and that my project is a not for profit fan game using IP that is owned by LucasArts. I considered emailing LucasArts for clarification, but failed to find a contact address (or one that was even remotely related to fan games). If LucasArts ever sends me a cease and desist, I will make every effort to comply. :)

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Original post by I_Smell_Tuna Rome Total War

Seconded.

Sounds like an idea I'm working on myself, at least to some extent. Mine has an element of strategy in that you have to work at a very high level to allocate ships from your fleet to a certain region and then take command as the lead of a small fighter squadron in a series of battles. It's your job to then defend your crusiers, battleships, transports and so on, as well as taking down the enemy ships in the area. As there's no resource management, you rarely get additional ships, so you have to ensure that your fleet is adequately protected within the missions themselves.

By the way, I like the stuff you have up on your website.

Thanks for all the comments guys.

Quote:

Original post by SunTzu Quote: Original post by I_Smell_Tuna Rome Total War Seconded.

Hmm I would have to disagree.
In Rome Total War you're still the supreme commander of your forces, you just also work for Rome.

In In Defence of the Empire (my game) you are much further down on the chain of command. But I guess I do see the similarities.

Quote:

The biggest problem that plagues this idea is that the player is pretty much doing the same missions that every other ai ship in the game is doing, and there is really little that the player can do to do them (the missions) better. To partially solve this, the player missions will be created seperately from all of the other missions, and will be more detailed (and probably more important).

Another solution might be to allow the player to choose between several missions (and an AI controlled fleet sent to missions that they don't do). This way it gives the player some more interaction with the game world. The player will, generally, be better at completing missions than an AI, so this choice will have a significant impact on the outcome of the game. It will actually encourage the player to take on the harder missions (and the more interesting missions) because they have a better chance at defeating the enemy.

As far as IP goes, if you design the game so that it is easy to replace the content (ship models, text, etc) then if you do get a cease and desist letter (or even choose to go commercial release) you can swap out the proprietary content and replace it with your own (and this would actually make it easier to mod the game too).

@Edtharan: Excellent idea!!
This would be hard to explain in RPG where you don't have FTL speeds, but with Hyperspace you can do almost anything. Distance/Time to travel can reduce available missions. Sending reinforcements to the battle is also an interesting option.

P.S. Just remember to leave Einstein's theories out.. It could create weird situations though.

Edtharan.rate++

Yup Einstein's theories are a no no. In fact the whole "ships shoot lasers, and the lasers travel way slower than the speed of light" thing is a fairly ridiculous concept. My game is fully rooted in science fiction, and less so in reality.

As far as Hyperspace goes, currently it still takes real-time days to travel inbetween planets, so I have given the option to enable time compression during hyperspace jumps